“No. Think harder. Think about that first day, when you wake up and there's a shift in the paradigm. When you look out the window and suddenly that sense that he's out there, that you'll see him next week or that you'll argue with him about something he said, will be gone. Like staring at a blank canvas.” He rolled his shoulders back slowly, watching the realisation form in front of him. “There’ll never be any way to paint over that. There will never be any way to fill that hole, Ara, and I love you, you know that, but even I can't fill that hole for you. I know. . .” He sighed, dropping his hands to his knees for a second before standing tall again. “I know you’ve messed up from time to time when it comes to him and the way you love him. But you do love him, and that’s what counts in the end, Ara, because after a hundred years with one person, that's the only thing that keeps you together. God knows.” He rubbed his brow. “I tried. I . . . but we failed, and it breaks my heart so immensely deep that you'll have to suffer that—that you'll have to feel that way for even a second. I would do anything. . .” His fists tightened. “Anything to keep you from that, because your life won't just be empty without him, Ara, it’ll be like living without air.”
I stepped closer, my eyes wide. “Jase?”
“He know this, too, Ara. He knows all that his death will do to you, and he is still going to go—still going to let you suffer that, because his reasons for dying far outweigh anything else he might care about.”
“What reasons?”
“That’s just it.” He offered a gentle smile; just one corner of his lip turning up, gifting me with the presence of his dimple. “I don’t even know.”
“Ara?”
I spun around quickly. “David.”
“What are you doing in here?” He glared at Jason as he walked over and placed his arm around me possessively.
“I was already in here when she came in,” Jase said flatly.
“Fine.” David looked from him to me, then back again. “Then tell me what’s going on.”
“We were just discussing your recent decision,” I said.
“Ara?” He sighed, stepping away. “Get back to bed. We’re not having this discussion again.”
“Don’t do that to her.” Jason moved in, coming up fast in front of David. “She has the right to fight for you. There has to be another way.”
David just smiled. “Would I be going to my death if there were?”
“Look, I understand that, but—” Jase’s words stopped, his eyes going smaller. “Where did you get that information?”
“What information?” I asked, stepping into the conversation.
David glanced back at me once, his shoulders sinking. “Don't you get it, brother? This has to end with her.”
“David, what do you mean?” I curled my white fingertips over his forearm. “Please don’t leave me in the dark anymore, David. I’m begging you.”
He looked at Jason one more time, who nodded, almost as if agreeing with something, then softly spoke my name—all the fight, the strain, the depth leaving his voice in defeat. “What you know of the prophecy so far is wrong.”
“What . . . what parts?”
“All of it. It’s backward, misinterpreted.” He started pacing. “This child, this Blood of Knight and Lilithian, that’s not you. Nothing has been foretold. Only promised.”
“Promised?”
“What those pages are is—” David stopped and looked away. “They’re not a prophecy, Ara. They’re a contract.”
My eyes darted to Jason. “So Jason was right.”
David frowned at him. “You told her it was a contract?”
“I did.”
“How did you know?”
“Arthur didn’t tell me,” Jason said, answering an unspoken question. “I only had to read it to see the truth.”
“And still,” David said, turning away to rub his head. “It seems even you missed the proverbial left hand while you were watching the right.”
“So it would seem.” Jason nodded once then looked at me. “Ara, you’ve not only been mislead, pretty girl. You’ve been lied to.”
“What do you mean? By who?” I asked Jase, but it really was aimed more at David, because I already knew the answer—could feel the tension coming off David’s soul in waves.
“Me,” David said.
“And Morgaine,” Jason added.
“What?” I nearly rocketed forward to grab David and shake him.
“We deliberately mislead you, my love—misled everyone.”
“Why?”
“It began as bended truth, many centuries ago,” he said. “Morgaine needed others to back her against a king she wanted overthrown. But without hope of new queen rising, the Lilithians wouldn’t stand. So, she tore the scrolls, burnt them, marred them in order to make the words appear as if they were from the Book of Carmen—”
“What’s the Book of Carmen?” I asked.
“A collection of Vampirie’s predictions written down throughout the centuries,” Jase informed.
“Morgaine made people believe there was a prophecy,” David continued. “And she created an army in the name of the new queen, not knowing whether one would ever return.”
“Why would she go to such lengths? What the hell is it we’re fighting against?”
“Drake,” both boys said simply.
“He is a master of the Dark Arts, Ara. He deals with Black Magic, and as if that weren’t something to fear enough, those dealings with the devil have turned his soul into something as twisted and black as death itself,” David said. “He has done unspeakable things, and even in a society of killers, there is a line we all draw. Morgaine was tired of seeing her people—your people suffer. She had to stop him, even if it took her centuries to do it.”
“So, she made the contract look like a prophecy?”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t they have supported her if it was a contract? I mean, doesn’t it promise the restoration of things taken?”
“No. It promises to restore one thing.”
“What one thing?”
“We don’t actually know.” David sighed the words out. “No one does. It was never mentioned in the contract.”
“All we do know for sure, Ara,” Jason said, “is that there’s no document foretelling the birth of a child—or the future possibility to restore mortality to vampires.”